It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical, says Berkeley physics Prof. Richard Muller, who still says that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. He has analyzed some of the most alarmist claims and his skepticism about them hasn’t changed.

What has changed is his doubt about the very existence of global warming. And he is now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause, he says.

But Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming, he notes. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.

Comments

"If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion - which he does, but he’s very effective at it - then let him fly any plane he wants." - Richard Muller, 2008

"There is a consensus that global warming is real. ...it’s going to get much, much worse." - Richard Muller, 2008

"Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate." - Richard Muller, 2003

That's terrific insight. It's his article about himself and we covered the Berkeley Earth project so basically took him at his word that he was a skeptic. But maybe he was a cautious critic. Hurricane Katrina and global warming was the biggest hysterical nonsense of 2006 so at least he doesn't believe that.

IMO BEST just replicated the existing methods, but did nothing to prove out that the methods are valid. Personally I'm skeptical that you can take values from weather stations and spatially average them to get a value that has any use. If temperature across an area was linear it'd be one thing, but they're not. Weather happens between stations.

And then there's stuff like this:If you don't like the values you get from a station, just change them!

And then there's the whole were are the stations located. Which is part of the reason for the above adjustments, except it looks like they're done in the wrong direction, Adjusting the good station with data from the bad stations.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/

I'm a scientist and I analyze data for a living. Muller is a fence sitter and is caught up in constant analysis and can't pull the trigger...he is caught up in his own unconscious fear. Muller is psychologically ambivalent and this is a symptom of mental illness when carried to extremes.. There is a time for data analysis but sooner or later a scientist reaches a conclusion or at least arrives at a best fit theory. Ambivalent scientist Mueller changes his mind and this is news? Anthropogenic climate change has been an established scientific fact for 20 years or more now...and is affirmed by multiple data sources. More than that...Climate Change is now not just a theory, it is an ever accelerating experiential reality. Each and every person in the world is now experiencing the effects of climate change. I walk outside and it is hotter every day. Severe weather is happening everywhere. Droughts, extreme tornadoes...receding glaciers, species are dying, the list goes on and on. A person would have to be a moron or completely unconscious to not acknowledge climate change.

Climate Change is now not just a theory, it is an ever accelerating experiential reality. Each and every person in the world is now experiencing the effects of climate change. I walk outside and it is hotter every day. Severe weather is happening everywhere.

are very weird things for a scientist to say. Gravity is 'just' a theory, so is evolution, but climate change is not. Obviously change happens but the modern 'CO2 and all the feedbacks our models hypothesize' is not a theory on a par with evolution so I am not sure why any scientist would write 'not just a theory' about anything. I wish it were a theory, then the debate would be settled.

And for a scientist to say his local temperature is all the evidence he needs is...I don't know what that is. Did scientists during Snowmageddon say that was all the evidence they need for an Ice Age?

Severe weather is happening everywhere. Droughts, extreme tornadoes...receding glaciers, species are dying, the list goes on and on.

It's not like these things didn't happen in the past, like the 1930's or anything.But what moron's like myself have issue with, is not that the climate isn't changing, it's the role that CO2 has in that change, the GCM's that validate that role, and whether the current changes are unique or not.

But as a scientist who analyzes data for a living, you've surely analyzed the actual data from the weather stations yourself, and already know this, right?